


Womanhood & Other Complications.

by error_cascade



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agender Natasha Romanov, Bisexual Darcy Lewis, Bisexual Tony Stark, Character Study, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Multi, Non-Graphic Smut, Sex, Sexism, Transphobia, character sketch, genderbend!Tony Stark, trans!Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 00:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/error_cascade/pseuds/error_cascade
Summary: Three different characters ponder what womanhood means in their lives.





	Womanhood & Other Complications.

One of Natasha’s favourite stories is when she managed to seduce information from a gay man. Natasha looks fantastic in drag. The punchline is that you don’t need to look particularly masculine to pass as a man. All you need is the thought in your head that you are truly no different from whomever you emulate. 

Natasha remembers memories, too many and too few. A little girl, clever and inquisitive. Maybe she would have grown up into a beautiful woman. Or perhaps not. 

The truth is, something important feels hollowed out inside of her. Some sense of how to feel like a person, how to remember what the right amount of remorse is when she kills someone to better the world. Whether her sense of gender is a part of that hollow is a puzzle she has little interest in. 

***

The first time Darcy had sex with a girl, she expected her breasts to feature prominently. It was surprising to her, when Natalie nearly bypassed them completely. Natalie ghosted her fingers over the indents of her waist, working her way down to the main show. As Darcy grasped the sheets between her fists, she realized she’d never trade her life for anyone else’s in the entire damn world. 

Darcy was smart. Sure, she was lousy at experimental sciences, like impressively so, like in a fires where there should not be fires sort of way, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t the smart girl before she started to develop. Smart and brash and chubby. Puberty did wonders for her, hypothetically. All of a sudden she had curves while most of the girls in her classes were still skinny androgens. 

In retrospect, the memories of her school years are wildly uncomfortable. But at the time (and maybe now) her brash qualities far outweighed her introspective ones. She didn’t react with horror when boys reached for her chest; she did her damn best to break their wrists and called it a day. 

It never occurred to her to feel shame over her body. That’s a lie. It occurred often but Darcy shoved it down. She is smart and bold. And so she wore shirts that dipped into her cleavage, flirted with boys and girls, and applied for jobs she was barely qualified for. And when she took that irksome philosophy of psychology class, she proposed that penis envy should really be renamed breast envy for all that men love them so. 

****

Maria told her that they expected a girl. Antonia Stark. When the news of her transition leaked, the tabloids called her Antonia. When she said she was still just Tony Stark, the tabloids leaked blurred pictures of her blowing a Playgirl model and called her a gay man in denial. She laughed, and cried, and took her whiskey neat. 

For a while, the world wanted to know why she couldn’t shut up and be a man. But the woman in her refused to follow a legacy of silence. Then they wanted to know why she had the wrong name, why she looked so slender and androgynous, why she never got the fake boobs or posed with her tits out, why she got into fights in bars (usually men who got too handsy for even her tastes), damn, this list is far too long. Why she couldn’t be a nice little straight girl (and the existence of Pepper Potts should answer that question plenty.) 

She took herself to high end barber shops and walked in Armani suits like she owned the damn place, because with a couple minutes of online banking she fucking could. She watched blank male faces, fully aware of the thoughts underneath. _I bet she’d blow me for a hair cut. What sort of woman is she?_ But money buys silence.


End file.
